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Artist Bio:

Leily Moghtader Mojdehi (b.1999) is an Iranian, Singaporean, British artist, based in London. She holds a BFA from Goldsmiths University of London (2021). She has exhibited at galleries and museums internationally, including Quench (Margate), South London Gallery (London), Ferens Art Gallery (Hull), and Zhan Art I Space (Selangor, Malaysia). She was selected for the 2022 Bloomberg New Contemporaries, shortlisted for the Ingram Prize (2023), and awarded the City of London x Outset Studiomakers Prize (2022).

Artist statement:

Mojdehi’s practice intertwines mediums such as painting, textiles and sculpture. Weaving inspiration from millennia of ancient traditions, an all-knowing algorithm and personal narratives, Mojdehi creates mixed-media works that act like a woven diary.

Pulling from familial archives, Mojdehi adopts and layers different visual languages, such sentimentally charged traditions include: Persian miniatures (like: use of flattened space), Qajar portraits (like: languid eyes and curved bodies), craft (like: crochet, introduced via grandma, re-introduced during COVID TikTok, humour, and all that is kitsch.

Creating works upon this assembly of personal allegory, using inherited materials and techniques, Mojdehi conscientiously forms an alternative archive. An act of care and urgency in her intimate exploration of self and of a sense of belonging, being of mixed heritage. Un-didactically, Mojdehi’s thrifty process and use of pluralist deconstructive languages, prompt conversations over the hierarchy of aesthetics, private and public space, and gender politics.

This playful mixing creates a gentle confusion between the real and the representational in: densely layered collage compositions, to tell embellished stories of unplaceable experiences.